Neha Patil (Editor)

Sam Spade (software)

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Sam Spade is the name of a Windows software tool designed to assist in tracking down sources of e-mail spam. It is also the name of a free web service that provides access to similar online tools. The Sam Spade utility was authored by Steve Atkins in 1997. It is named after the fictional character Sam Spade.

Contents

Query tools

The main features (query tools) are:

  • Zone Transfer – ask a DNS server for all it knows about a domain
  • SMTP Relay Check – check whether a mail server allows third party relaying
  • Scan Addresses – scan a range of IP addresses looking for open ports
  • Crawl website – search a website, looking for email addresses, offsite links, etc.
  • Browse web – browse the web in a raw http format
  • Check cancels – search your news server for cancel messages
  • Fast and Slow Traceroute – find the route packets take between you and a remote system
  • S-Lang command – issue a scripting command; useful for debugging scripts
  • Decode URL – decipher an obfuscated URL
  • Parse email headers – read email headers and make a guess about the origin of the email

    • Website history

  • The last fully functional version of the website was available 2004-02-26.
  • The text
    • appeared by 2004-03-26.
  • The "very much trimmed down" description was reduced to "slightly trimmed down" by 2004-05-21.
  • The last fully functional version of the website was available 2004-02-26." by 2004-05-21.
  • The "System outages" message was gone by 2004-12-10.
  • The text
    • appeared 2006-10-24.
  • The "Right now" sentence in the previous bullet was gone by 2006-11-10.
  • The "Commentary" headline had been replaced by a "Status" header and the text "We'll be adding some new tools (and resurrecting some of the older ones) soon. Any thoughts on what we should add? Email me." had been added by 2007-02-02.
  • The dysfunctional text "We had a two-drive failure on our main server array this weekend, so stuff is very broken. We'll be back soon." and CSS from wordtothewise.com appeared by 2007-02-05.
  • The text
    • appeared by 2007-02-21.
  • The two sentences about drives and adding in the previous bullet were replaced by "Need to make DNS queries? Check email blacklists? Take a look at emailstuff.org" by 2007-12-07.
  • The last archived version of the text in the previous bullet was 2010-06-10.
  • The site displayed dysfunctional message "Back soon" by 2011-02-25.
  • The site displayed dysfunctional message "It works!" by 2011-06-29, and has alternated between those two messages ever since.

    • References

    Sam Spade (software) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA